Posted by David R. on January 11th, 2006 — Posted in music
That motherfucker Jess Harvell said what I wanted to say, damn it:
Not every post was a work of genius; not every post had to be. This is the fine line blogs walk in general, between “quality” and off-the-cuff, the blurred line between the two being where much of the interest comes from. My own NYLPM posts were uniformly awful; I was just plain learning how to write. But I just appreciated the forum to be a fool in public, to be a part of an argumentative, intelligent community. And yeah, that matters.
When I found out Tom was closing up shop, I got a llittle choked up. Or misty-eyed. Or whatever you want to call it. I’ll admit, I lost touch w/ the blog in recent times, probably soon after I stopped being a regular contributor, but (for whatever reason) I always had it in the back of my mind to return. And now I can’t. If I was feeling especially maudlin, I’d go off on a boring tangent relating this “you can’t go home” feeling to what I’ll feel when my childhood home goes on the market. Except that Mom selling my house will involve me doing lots of moving and painting and cleaning - those bittersweet warm fuzzies will fade away quicklike once I throw out my back saying sayonara to ten years of Ranger Rick.
Yeah, I feel the same way about most of my NYLPM contributions as Jess does about his - for the most part, holy shit they’re bad. But they’re also represent the one moment during my whoop-dee-doo music writing career where I was having loads of fun. A lot of it had to do w/ that sense of community, & showing off for an audience, & just flouncing around in general. But there was also that novel sense of personal discovery, tearing down the walls of anti-pop hegemony and feeling the freedom that comes with knowing I can buy a Top 40 hip-hop CD at Circuit City without fearing bloody leather-clad reprisal from Thee Punk Police. (I was a trip in my early 20s, no doubt about it.)
But, of course, It Was Different Then. Nowadays, the music bloggoBuckyBall is chock-full of participants of all stripes and grammatical acumen and payscales, with a shitload of professional folks infiltrating a domain that was once strictly Amateurs Only. The doors blew off the joint a long time ago; what used to be a quaint little house party has spread down every street imaginable. And part of the fun (for me, in hindsight) was that insularity. Sure, I was this guy in New England sharing textspace with a guy from England I’ve never met, it felt like I was just shooting the shit with a long-time pal.
A pal, by the way, that has this fantastic ability to phrase his thoughts in this casually confident manner that continues to floor me. Like anyone could actually tackle THE BEATLES and have something new to say, and say it so well:
Intentionally or not, “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine” make a perfect pair. Crushing isolation as the flip of a song that values limitless community - “And my friends are all aboard / Many more of them live next door”. The one set in a drably recognizable town, the other in a fantasy utopia. Recital and singalong. It strikes me that the idea of singing along - with friends, or in costume, or to mantras, or on a worldwide satellite link - is a thread in much later Beatles music. For me though, this big-hearted single is the best expression of what made them great.
Motherfucking Tom Ewing. You beautiful bastard.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a half-ass testimonial to NYLPM, not to Tom - he’s still kicking out knowledge, just not in a groop-blog fashion.
To be honest (and to talk about myself some more): when I heard the news of NYLPM’s cessation, I initially wanted to start my own like-minded group blog that encapsulated the insight & irreverence that its precedesor, on its best days, possessed in spades. Then I realized that if I really wanted to carry on said blog’s good work, it’d behoove me to first attempt to embody said insight & irreverence in my own writing. And on a more regular schedule.
So, yeah - if you don’t like what I say from this point forward, it’s Tom’s fault. Thanks, Tom!
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Posted by David R. on January 7th, 2006 — Posted in film
{War of the Worlds; dir. Steven Spielberg, 2005}
Well, shut my mouth - this movie’s about the power & perseverance of germs, and not at all allegorical regarding American involvement in the Middle East post-911! Why, I’m sure that shot of the patriot statue covered in decaying red veins as Tom & Dakota near their destination meant nothing at all! And Tom’s son - I’m great with character names, lemme tell you - his frustration at wanting to get back at those alien bastards, there wasn’t any heavy-handed parallel to draw at all! At least any parallel worth following through. Nah, let’s just start with this intriguing amoral atypical flight from a seemingly omnipotent enemy where the strapping dad’s a weak-willed jerk, and the kids are the ones with stones. And then let’s just undercut any interesting ideas or premises we’ve mistakenly pursued - humanity as organism being attacked by a virus; survivors as the living dead, shuffling towards some unknown destination - for some hackneyed action, because it’s time to knock off the bad guys, reunite everyone, and pay Morgan Freeman.
Yeah, the radio not working was part of the verisimilitude - hey, I believed that Aliens Could Kick Our Ass and cause property values to plummet something harsh - but it going out sure seemed like a message of some sort. It’s a shame, too - Spielberg was doing so damn well following in Orson’s footsteps for the first half of the movie. Just show (or tell) folks lots of stuff, paint vivid pictures, but keep salient details under wraps, and they’ll be at your beck & call. Just show the carnage. Show the aftermath. Show the people reacting to this situation. Show these inscrutable machines destroying everything in their path w/out offering explanation or trying to get into why it’s happening. Who cares why? They are Evil - some primal force that exists only to conquer & destroy. Why are they attacking Earth? Because it’s there. That’s all anyone needs to know. Have the bad guys eat lead, sure, but come on, don’t show the wittle aliens rifling through someone’s basement like the cute little lovechildren of H. R. Giger & Peyo right before A) Marvin & Co. start making Soylent Green and B) Tom Cruise offers his homage to Raising Arizona.
Spielberg rankles me something serious, because whatever moves & whatever decisions he makes seem to be those choices that push things too far for my liking. Of course the mechanic that fixed the car being stolen has to get zapped just as our heroes drive away. Of course there have to be multiple shots of folks trapped in drowning cars. Of course Tom’s gotta eat blackened passerby fresh from the former person running just in front of him while running back to his kids. And, sure, why not relive that annoying scene from Jurassic Park where I was rooting for the raptors to bust up the kitchen and eat those annoying brat kids. He should’ve stopped at one basement scene - that first one was damn near perfect. But, no, please, zap me a few more times with the Tingler, please - I won’t feel anything otherwise.
If War of the Worlds is meant to be a feel-good story about the indomitable gumption and pluck of humanity, instead of a cautionary tale about the overreaching hubris of a foreign culture invading a world they don’t understand (and possibly don’t want to), then I’ll just go sit in the corner and wait my turn.
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Posted by David R. on August 23rd, 2005 — Posted in film
{The Spanish Prisoner; dir. David Mamet, 1997}
Ah, Mamet, you stiff stylized bastard. The rigid deliveries for the first half-hour were making me cringe, esp. from Mrs. Mamet. On an episode of Dinner For Five, Delroy Lindo (I think it was him) talked about how, unlike other script writers / director types, you do not fuck w/ Mamet’s words - you make them work as they are on the page, or you don’t work. (Watch me paraphrase!) In that, Campbell Scott’s mannered ways & means make him a perfect non-profane Mamet mouthpiece - I don’t think he cussed once all movie. Once the machinations began to get going, the “oh god TALK LIKE HOMO SAPIEN PLZ” fear subsided, though the whole tennis book thing - which Mamet gladly beats the viewer over the head with for a good five minutes- was apparent halfway through the interrogation scene. Obviousness (or obliviousness to the obvious) was the underlying theme for the whole shebang, though, from the FBI business card to the hamfisted breakfast seduction to the ubiquitous Japanese tourists.
Contrast Mamet’s Spartan stylization re: dialogue w/ Aaron Sorkin’s punchdrunk love of language (since I caught the last 15 minutes of a West Wing episode prior to the flick; the one about Nellie Bly, and suing the KKK, and duty, and Charlie Sheen’s horn) - equally stylized, but “erring” on the opposite side of the scale, opting for opulent perfection and precision, with words tripping off the tongue like each character’s spent their adolescence carrying pebbles in their mouth. Mamet’s fighting with language, making it do his bidding whether it can or can’t - he seems to be that way w/ characterization from time to time, too, but I feel sketchy actually asserting that w/ any strength. Sorkin lets the words take on a life of their own, lets them fly loose and free, and still lets the character’s quirks and foibles make themselves known, though I find myself on equally shaky ground saying THIS, as I only know Sorkin through Bartlett For America. (Insert grumble grumble about post-Sorkin pooch screwing here - yeah, let’s put all the characters on edge 24-7, since we can’t be bothered to do right by any precedent. Will Bailey, fuck you and your sub-Seaborn schtick. Oh, and CJ, you’re now an inneffectual lovelorn harpie. And, hey, look, flashback!)
Note to self: The Boogens?
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Posted by David R. on August 17th, 2005 — Posted in real
You drop in, you drop out. Sometimes the “out” leaves the last bits festering. Like when you’re living off campus in Storrs, CT, in a ratty apartment complex, on the top floor, next to softball girls that CAN put their bags of trash outside the apt but CAN’T get the bags from the stoop to the dumpster, until it’s late August, and even the flies inside the bag (THAT YOU CAN SEE) are saying, “hey, yo, trash.” Like that.
And sometimes the “out” is just a clean break, a siesta that says you don’t have to write every damn thing down, that there is stuff that can pass w/out comment (and maybe should, if you’re not on your game, suckass), that sometimes doing nothing is the best and necessary thing. Sometimes you need to take a day / week / month off from work / life, even if you can’t afford it.
Usually, shit staying the same irks the crap out of me - probably because the lack of change in a thing seems to mock my own Big Gulp of inertia - but I kinda like that sometimes stuff just stays there, if you let it. Or you know where to look.
(The intent behind this post: killing time, s’all.)
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Posted by David R. on August 5th, 2005 — Posted in real
“disturbed sing up web street team band chicago believe”
Whoa. (Why the hell is my head trying to conflate the oooh-AHAHAHAHAH hairballing w/ Fantasia? God damn STOP THAT PLEASE.) (That’s Fantasia the Idol, not Fantasia the broomstick boondoggle.)
This is where I ask the viewing audience on new ways in which one can lose in online poker when given pocket Aces, because I’ve starting to get bored. I’ve lost to KK, I’ve lost to AK (suited and non-suited), I’ve lost to AQ (suited and non-suited), I’ve lost to JJ (non-suited - I hope!), and, in one particularly infuriating instance, lost to some mental midget playing J7 offsuit. When he reraised me all-in preflop. (Let the record show that, when that went down, my fists descended upon my keyboard like bitchy hail stones while I struggled to convey my displeasure w/ such asshattery in a fresh, exciting display of sore-losership. Such displays involved many deployments of the f-bomb. And a few comments about said asshat’s lineage and mental capacity. As if referring to said “good player” as an asshat doesn’t make my feelings about him abundandly clear - and it should be a him, because a “she” would not be so dense as to call a 5x raise w/ such crap.)
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Posted by David R. on August 1st, 2005 — Posted in music
Mr. Perpetua caught me in a blue lie: “Konichiwa Bitches” isn’t the title track of Robyn’s album. The album’s eponymous. Konichiwa (again, as Mr. P. notes) is the name of Robyn’s label, so I’d like to think my this-is-me assertion is still spot-on. Or maybe it’s more a “damn if a multi-million dollar media conglomerate would actually deign to pay me to follow my muse wherever it goes, so fudge you” type of statement. Regardless, this sort of mission statement definitely inspires a Zellwegger-hearts-Cruise type of fanatical loyalty in yours truly. (Bob Sugar’s a sucker punk, anyway.)
In other worthless news: got a referral from HotBot. I didn’t even know HotBot was still around! Kudos!
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Posted by David R. on July 28th, 2005 — Posted in music
Why Jann would boot my dead ass at the first opportunity: I just found out yesterday about Robyn’s “Konichiwa Bitches” TWO MONTHS after Matthew P. fell on it, and am now posting about this after S/FJ gets on it (and laments hizzown lack of giddyup in this matter).
Robyn is definitely working a Missy vibe, as well as the Gwen Stefani mojo that’s gotten “Hollaback Girl” on hip-hop radio (at least around my ears). Given that this is the TITLE TRACK, tho, I don’t know that calling the track “token” is the way to go - this isn’t some Ethel Merman Studio 54 thing. But sweet crap it’s fantastic, from the bloops and bleeps to her chirpy cheeky clipped vocals to the call and response (she says “What?”, and some morose robot-sounding voice finishes her line) to all the SFX. Nice nice nice. Cross over (again) already, Ms. R!
(My stupid fucking blog? *winky*)
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Posted by David R. on July 27th, 2005 — Posted in music
So while S/FJ is digging out his foxhole / oil well (with the help of facts and Rob Sheffield, at the gate and down the stretch), FJB rears up and opens fire on everyone (including himself, which I think is so wrong, but I would, even if I wasn’t a fan, as the “my art is killing culture” line of thought strikes me as odious bullshit, which he kinda admits at the end, but I’m not sure he’s down w/ that) (don’t push me, or I’ll start singing songs from Tempting at obnoxious volumes, and me and high notes have a love/hate thing going on). Carl Wilson also weighs in on the kerfuffle instigated by Kelefa Sanneh and his Intonation spanking machine.
Just a half-ass placeholder full of the obvious while I scratch my stubble and think on “why it is that the monocle is so oft trained so as to focus an unflattering beam on a music marginal yet hegemonic, too commercially unseaworthy to reach the fabled golden city of Pop, surely too artistically anemic to have ever been any sort of serious “challenge” to the ascendancy of hip-hop, and yet somehow too annoyingly present in the discourse to stop writing about.” Separate from the actual music (seeing as how, at the rock’s heyday - “Kerosene / This Ain’t No Picnic / Silver Rocket,” according to RS - I was kneedeep in Shanice and Shannon, and learning how my body worked Death Cab style), the indie rock “myth” is, ideally, a Horatio Alger story (a story, I imagine, that the US administration during the reign of SST and Homestead would’ve loved, were it couched in more palatable dress) - pull up yr bootstraps, hit RECORD, strum about something, rent a van, hit up colleges for money, &c.
That’s hip-hop’s story, too, but hip-hop in the 80s was rock in the 50s and 60s - too unknown, too unruly, and probably too black (yes I want to be flamed) - and the standard bearers that street teamed for Indie Rock weren’t ready / willing to embrace it. There’s also the fact that hip-hop exploded commercially very quickly, and embraced that explosion, rolling around like Demi Moore making dollar bill angels. When Nirvana went pop, just as many folks went goofy trying to clean up the mess as dove right into the slop. Or so history tells us - I imagine there were just as many folks in hip-hop camps battening down the hatches once shit went yard. (Tastemakers are pop culture’s lawyers.)
Fear of success (”with great power comes great responsibility”), fear of compromise. Moreover, the comfort of mediocrity (as both KS and FJB call it). Tho, as CW & I note, Kelefa’s mention of this in the Intonation article - during a moment where indie rock is actually fucking succeeding on as U2 a level as it probably could - is very suspect. (Wish I could get to CW’s article right now, but a Higher Power prevents me from reading it at this moment.)
Also: someone please tell me, in regard to that helping friendly KS article, how “(nothing but the quotes from reviews are needed to skewer [Pitchfork]),” or how making note of the ratings scale does a similar task, unless it’s once again all about indie rock parochialism. If we’re talking about thee history of the site, then sure, waste yr ammo (I’ll even help you load), but I could easily link to a plethora of articles and reviews from the past year that say “kiss my ARP”. If there is a beef to be had by anyone out there regarding Pitchfork AS THE SITE STANDS RIGHT NOW that can phrase their dissent intelligently and not resort to nyeah nyeah penny-ante name-calling (and actually wants to bother doing this), PLEASE COME FORWARD (or offer links to such stuff).
(This is where I’d admit shock at myself actually standing up for the Fork, when, not even two years ago, I’d be on the other side chucking stones w/ the rest of the freedom fighters.) (I’ll admit, being on staff helps a bit.) (If anyone hedging on replying - I’ll sweeten the deal and repost / revive my old Fork bitchfests from when I was young, naive, and uncompromised.)
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Posted by David R. on July 25th, 2005 — Posted in music
Franklin J. Bruno, master songsmith and master of sass-not-sass (emphasis mine):
Field report: During the same dinner, Bree and I quizzed the 13 year-olds on what music they like. “Hip-hop” was the immediate response; didn’t get much on particular artists beyond Eminem. Asked if they liked any rock bands at all: “Maroon 5.” And (the drummer’s daughter), “The Beatles.” Another of the girls agreed, and added, everyone likes the Beatles…except Natalie.” (Another of their friends, I assume.) “Natalie was like, The Beatles suck, and I was like, no, you don’t like The Beatles, and she was like, no, they suck.” (Perhaps Natalie should take up blogging.) I asked if they or their friends still liked Britney; mostly, no, though the drummer’s daughter still says she does. (She’d also heard of MIA, I think through an older sister.) They also said they weren’t sure they’d ever heard Nirvana; when I mentioned that they were huge around 1992, one reminded me, “that’s the year I was born.”
That last sentence resonates w/ me a little more than it probably would usually, as I just finished plopping out a couple hundred words about the new Bob Mould album (wherein I blah-blah about Mould’s musical legacy v. what he’s actually done for most of his musical career, which involves not being in Husker Du).
I also spent a lot more time than I should have a few days ago trying to explain the appeal of “Amerindie” music (cf. Husker Du, Minutemen, Mission of Burma) to someone that just doesn’t “get it,” when in fact I’m not sure if I get it, or in fact would get it now. A lot of my interest in that stuff came about through reading about it, and being attracted to the mythology and the symbolism surrounding the stuff - what the music represented as much as the actual music being made (and the dogmatic anti-pop / anti-rock rhetoric that was attached, which appealed to me as a teenager being inundated w/ classic rock, and a teenager trying to escape his past and any signifiers of it, including pop radio).
This is where I’d link to stuff I wrote way way back about what Husker Du meant to me, and what I thought about the whole Nirvana thing, and other well-traveled wahey, but that stuff will have to wait a wee while.
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Posted by David R. on July 22nd, 2005 — Posted in baseball
I don’t exactly remember where I found these, but someone somewhere (not me, I swear) (maybe this guy?) wrote these haiku concerning the National League outfielders involved in this year’s All-Star Game. But I didn’t do it. Hell no. If the true author of this work (again, not me) comes forward, this post might go poof, so enjoy them while you can. (And if you think they aren’t any good, then you suck. Nyeah.)
CARLOS BELTRAN
His accurate speed -
Hindered by large pocket change -
Stains the Flushing bowl
JIM EDMONDS
An inhuman glove
Worn by clay muscle and bone
Create fear in flight
BOBBY ABREU
Anonymous son
Of Liberty and freedom -
In one word, baseball
JASON BAY
Steel that shall not rust
In the wake of corrosive
long-tossed bases - yet
MIGUEL CABRERA
Here, Fish bait the hook
With youth and swaddled softness -
But the teeth are sharp
LUIS GONZALEZ
The oldest of trees
Knows when to break, when to bend
And when to take root
ANDRUW JONES
A swing, forgotten -
A talent, lost in swagger -
A career, reborn
CARLOS LEE
He replaces wind
With the familiar sound
Of ball banging wall
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